Original 35mm color slide taken by amateur photographer George Reid. Immediately after the assassination and in the following days, people left flowers and mementos in Dealey Plaza in honor of President Kennedy. This picture was taken on Monday afternoon, November 25, 1963, around the time the president's body was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.

Curator's Notes

The red building in the background housed the Dallas County Jail and its most famous prisoner this day was Jack Ruby, who had been transferred from the Dallas Police Department during the lunch hour for having shot and killed accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963. His cell was on the sixth floor, though all the cells were several feet back from the windows. - Gary Mack, Curator

In his 1996 oral history, George Reid remembered his visit to Dealey Plaza on the weekend of the assassination: "People were starting to leave things and then, by Sunday morning, there was quite a bit of stuff there--quite a lot of flowers.... And people were coming down there, and people were standing there crying. People just bawling and just talking to each other, hugging each other, you know. It was an emotional scene that day." - Stephen Fagin, Curator